Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages eBook

Adam Kraft was born in Nueremberg in the early fifteenth
century and his work is a curious link between Gothic
and Renaissance styles. His chief characteristic
is expressed by P. J. Ree, who says: “The
essence of his art is best described as a naive realism
sustained by tender and warm religious zeal.”
Adam Kraft carved the Stations of the Cross, to occupy,
on the road to St. John’s Cemetery in Nueremberg,
the same relative distances apart as those of the actual
scenes between Pilate’s house and Golgotha.
Easter Sepulchres were often enriched with very beautiful
sculptures by the first masters. Adam Kraft carved
the noble scene of the Burial of Christ in St. John’s
churchyard in Nueremberg.

It is curious that the same mind and hand which conceived
and carved these short stumpy figures, should have
made the marvel of slim grace, the Tabernacle, or
Pyx, at St. Lorenz. A figure of the artist kneeling,
together with two workmen, one old and one young, supports
the beautiful shrine, which rears itself in graduated
stages to the tall Gothic roof, where it follows the
curve of a rib, and turns over at the top exactly
like some beautiful clinging plant departing from
its support, and flowering into an exquisitely proportioned
spiral. It suggests a gigantic crozier. Before
it was known what a slender metal core followed this
wonderful growth, on the inside, there was a tradition
that Kraft had discovered “a wonderful method
for softening and moulding hard stones.”
The charming relief by Kraft on the Weighing Office
exhibits quite another side of his genius; here three
men are engaged in weighing a bale of goods in a pair
of scales: a charming arrangement of proportion
naturally grows out of this theme, which may have been
a survival in the mind of the artist of his memory
of the numerous tympana with the Judgment of Michael
weighing souls. The design is most attractive,
and the decorative feeling is enhanced by two coats
of arms and a little Gothic tracery running across
the top. When Adam Kraft died in 1508, the art
of sculpture practically ceased in Nueremberg.

[Illustration: RELIEF BY ADAM KRAFT]

CHAPTER IX

CARVING IN WOOD AND IVORY

If the Germans were somewhat less original than the
French, English, and Italians in their stone carving,
they made up for this deficiency by a very remarkable
skill in wood carving. Being later, in period,
this art was usually characterized by more naturalism
than that of sculpture in stone.

In Germany the art of sculpture in wood is said to
have been in full favour as early as the thirteenth
century. There are two excellent wooden monuments,
one at Laach erected to Count Palatine Henry III.,
who died in 1095, and another to Count Henry III. of
Sayne, in 1246. The carving shows signs of the
transition to Gothic forms. Large wooden crucifixes
were carved in Germany in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Byzantine feeling is usual in these
figures, which are frequently larger than life.